30th April 2015
Local history – Soviet heritage… I recently visited some places in Belarus for the first time. The most striking was the tower of Kamianets, one of several strongholds built by the rulers of the Volhynia principality in the 13th century to protect their northern border. It is one of the few medieval remains in Belarus. […]
27th March 2015
Sir Terry Pratchett, the witty creator of Discworld I don’t read fantasy books – they’re just not my taste. So I’ve not read any novels by Sir Terry Pratchett, the author who died two weeks ago. He wrote 40 novels about an imaginary place called “Discworld” which was, apparently, a “flat disc balanced on the […]
26th February 2015
Belarus is a net exporter of services just like Britain, so I discovered recently. I was surprised, and have been wondering which services Belarus is exporting. After my blog about tourism to Belarus, I wanted to write about a key element of tourism: service culture. Services and service culture aren’t the same, but understanding one […]
10th February 2015
(on occasion of UK participation in the 2015 Minsk international book fair) I was attracted to my job by Russian culture, which I first came across in my late adolescent and early adult years. It started with music and literature – mostly 19th century. But then I read a lot about 20th century Russian and […]
2nd February 2015
One of the great attractions of becoming a diplomat is the opportunity to live in different places abroad. Lots of people travel abroad but, unlike diplomats, they tend only to stay for a short period. I notice there is a lot of argument in cyberspace about the differences between “a tourist” and “a traveller”: I […]
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23rd January 2015
Last week, we formally opened the new Visa Application Centre in Minsk. This was a satisfying moment as we had been working on this for much of last year. The new centre in Minsk is part of a global programme to close visa sections in embassies, and transfer the application process to privately run application […]